Enigmatic
by singsongsung
Summary: Serena/Carter. A lifetime of something they could never quite define.


**A/N: **This is fairly random and perhaps even pointless, but I just can't stop writing these two, they're so intriguing, not to mention beautiful. This spans all the years they've known each other and delves into the future. Review, please!

_e–nig–ma: a puzzling or inexplicable person, situation, or occurrence_

--

She was an enigma, and he liked her that way, because it wouldn't be any fun if it was easy.

And he figured that you can't know that it's worth it unless it's hard sometimes.

--

The very first thing he ever learned about her was that she liked strawberries. She liked the fruit and anything flavoured or scented that way. She had strawberry jam on her toast in the morning, drank strawberry daiquiris, bought strawberry lip balm. She thought pink flowers should smell like strawberries because that's would just be _better_. When they went to Central Park she bought a strawberry smoothie on the way. And the very first time they kissed he expected her to taste like strawberries – jam, smoothies, liquor, chapstick – but she didn't. She tasted like…_Serena_. It was distinctive and a combination of more flavours and feelings than he could ever attempt to name, and that was when he realizes that she's the hardest person he'll ever try to figure out, but that she also might be the only person he'll put the effort in for.

--

She was rarely shy. So rarely, in fact, that he probably could have counted the instances on the fingers of one hand. She had the world at her disposal and the world wanted it that way; girls like Serena van der Woodsen didn't have any need to blush and stumble over their words or cast their eyes downward. But sometimes when he looked at her a certain way he could see the blood rush up, colouring her cheeks and painting a rash of pinkness over her shoulders. He loved it most when she wasn't wearing much – a dress that bared her shoulders of a bikini or one of his dress shirts with the first few buttons undone, and he could see the way his gaze could change every inch of her skin. He couldn't deny that he loved having that effect on her.

--

He liked to rescue her. She had a knack for getting herself caught up in impossible situations, and he found it amusing, endearing, and sexy in a strangely dangerous way. He liked that she had no qualms about getting in trouble. And he liked that earnest way her eyes got even if she smiled before she kissed him in thanks. He liked that whenever he walked into her life, he was guaranteed an unforgettable adventure.

She was a pretty crier – her face didn't look beautiful when her cheeks were blotchy and red and her lips were trembling and there were tears falling from her eyes, but there was something poetic about her vulnerability, something intoxicating in her navy blue eyes. He loved that.

But he also kind of liked the times he'd appear and her world would be steady and still, and she'd hold his hand as they walked down New York City sidewalks or drag him down the streetlamp-lit roads in some obscure French town. He never really understood how they – two people with such adventure lust – managed to run into one another so often, but he was thankful for it, and he figured it had to mean something.

He liked the way her hair glowed in the moonlight and the way she could match his smirk with one of her own, and he liked that he could never know _exactly_ what she was thinking.

--

She had a million moves that could wrap men and boys around her littlest finger in an instant. She was a goddess and she was exuberant and everything about her just begged to be fallen in love with. All she really had to do was _be_. But it was much, much to get her to fall in love with someone. She had reservations built up from years of watching her mother go through man after man. She chose to be stronger than that or better than that – just _more than that_.

But he had reservations, too, so maybe they were a perfect fit. And the way she looked at him sometimes made him think that he might be able to break down a few of her barriers.

He could make her blush, after all, and that had to mean something.

--

Post-coital, she's a cereal girl. He thought he might be able to predict her just once – old-fashioned vanilla ice cream and chocolate-covered strawberries – but that was not what she wanted. The first time he woke up with her body pressed close to his and her contented breaths brushing his skin, dimly realizing that he was wide awake at three thirty in the morning after that sated, half-dreaming, after sex nap, he had a stupid, stupid smile on his face that he couldn't make go away. She stirred at his side and smiled as she cuddled closer still, her fingers playing along the smile his lips had formed, her eyes dark and dancing. He offered her his decadent snacks as he kissed her fingertips, and she wrinkled her nose adorably and turned him down gently.

She'd wrapped herself up in one of his robes and plodded out of his room in her bare feet, flipping her mussed-up hair over her shoulder as she cast a glance back at him, wordlessly demanding that he follow. Cereal, she said, was what she wanted, what they needed.

And not just _any_ cereal. She needed Mini-Wheats – the strawberry flavoured ones – in a bowl with two percent milk and a banana chopped overtop. He cut the bananas while she poured cereal and milk in the quiet of the empty kitchen at his Upper East Side apartment, appreciating the silence and admiring the way her long hair hung around her face and the way her hips moved as she traipsed from the counter to the fridge and back. She perched on top of his counter to eat, legs dangling down, heels bouncing lightly off the cupboards beneath her while she ate, studying him with an indefinable expression on her face.

He slipped to stand in between her legs and kissed her until she forgot about her cereal and her hands were pushing impatiently at the waistband of his boxers and his hands were gently untying her robe and she tasted like _milkstrawberrysugarbanana_ and all those other things he couldn't put words to and afterward she giggled that they should always have sex in the kitchen because they were that much closer to the food and he resigned himself to slicing up a banana for her once again, wondering why he'd do these things for her and only her.

--

As he got to know her even better over the years, he learned that she hated salon shampoo. She had more than enough money to splurge on good products, but her hair was remarkable enough as it was, and she didn't like who professional shampoos smelled. She liked the stuff you could get on sale at any drugstore for five bucks a bottle. It smelled a little like strawberries and citrus fruits and something else tangy, and he grew to associate it with her. He liked the way it invaded his nostrils when he kissed her cheek and the way it lingered on his pillowcases.

--

Once they got serious and started spending much more time together, they started surprising each other with impulsive trips, because bolting off somewhere was something they did better than anyone. He often picked exotics locales – he whisked her away so often that she kept malaria pills in her purse as a joke – and she balanced him by sticking closer to home, places like the old puppet theatre in Central Park and a tiny café with amazing coffee that she'd discovered one drunken night.

The sunniest day he could ever remember, she took him to a carnival, glowing in the sunlight, wearing a polka dot skirt that made her look amazingly like 1950s movie star and showed off her legs amazing. She dragged him after her and onto every ride, made him play games until he won her a giant teddy bear she would inevitably forget about in a day, and ate pink cotton candy.

They were spinning around on the Tilt-a-Whirl and she was playfully teasing him about the grin he'd been wearing for the last couple hours when her smile dropped a bit and her eyes grew sombre. They'd hit that lull in the ride before the spinning started up again and she said, quietly but confidently, _I love you_.

It was at that exact moment that the spinning began again and all possibilities of conversation died, so he could only look at her in his peripheral vision as they spun around, and then in the opposite direction, gripping the handrail, bodies pressed right together as the direction of rotation changed. When they hit the next lull, he went to speak, but she interrupted him, rambling about how she was sorry to have caught him off guard and how she knew that wasn't the sort of thing they said to one another and how it was a totally stupid moment to say it but she just couldn't hold it in any longer, and he didn't have to say anything back because it was a hard thing to say, and she'd had never, ever said it first before…

He cut her off with a slow but steady _I love you, too_ and enjoyed the way redness crept into her cheeks as she bit her lower lip shyly, and as he kissed her the spinning started up again but he hardly even noticed it because he was nearly dizzy with happiness already.

--

She got pregnant when she was twenty and he was twenty-four, and at first it was a lot of tears and panic and arguing, but they settled into happiness with an ease that surprised him. He moved to Manhattan permanently and he got used to it, coming home to see her lying on the bed with her nose buried in a baby book, peeking up overtop of it to shoot him a smile. He'd never bargained on fatherhood being part of his future, and he'd never really seen himself choosing one place to live for an extended period of time, but it felt okay. Better than okay. With this girl, nothing was ever boring.

They knew their baby would have blue eyes, because they both did, and they teased each other about whose hair colour would win out in the end. Serena was young and still childish in some of her stubborn ways, but she had always had excellent maternal instincts, and it didn't seem too early, didn't seem like they were missing anything. She craved bananas and pickles – _at the same time –_ and he laughed at her and bought a soft, pink blanket with strawberries on it the day after she winked at him and told him she thought it was a girl. They ignored the gossip that surrounded them and she cried and kissed him hard the day he gave her the blanket and it all seemed peaceful and real and _right_.

She lost the baby three and a half months into her pregnancy when he was a quick four-day trip to Dubai to sort out some business issues that required he be there in person rather than over the phone. He got a solemn, sympathetic-yet-vaguely-awkward phone call from Chuck informing him of her miscarriage and he felt his heart drop and his stomach twist in foreign, awful ways. He abandoned all business meetings and took the first plane he could find back to NYC. By the time he made it halfway around the world it was late in the day and she'd been released from the hospital and had apparently insisted on going home to his apartment, where they'd basically been living together, and Blair was with her. Chuck picked him up in his limo without asking any questions and walked him upstairs.

He got stuck in the doorway of his own bedroom, unable to go any further. She was lying in bed, barely visible under a pile of blankets, blonde hair splayed against her pillow like a halo, and Blair was perched at her side, talking in soft, soothing tones. Before he could sum up the courage to step inside his own bedroom, Serena's mother breezed past him, touching Blair's back and taking the brunette's spot. Blair exited the room, giving his elbow a squeeze before she reached out to her boyfriend and let him wrap her up in his arms while they walked into the next room. He stood out in the hallway with his back to the wall and his eyes closed, breathing hard, his throat tightening as he heard Serena's sobs break out over Lily's whispers.

Lily, Chuck, and Blair left shortly after, and that's when he went in to see her. Moonlight was seeping in through the windows, flooding the room. He sat next to her and brushed her hair out of her face and managed to really look at her, to see the tear tracks on her cheeks, and the warm, damp cloth laying over her lower abdomen and the strawberry-patterned small blanket lying nearby. When she said hi to him her voice was broken and thick and he almost needed to cry. There was no intoxicating poetry in her eyes, only deep, dark grief. He apologized for not having been there and she shook her head, forgiving him wordlessly while his thumb moved slowly over the skin just below her hipbone, and he realized that he couldn't quite forgive himself just yet. He _hated_ that it had happened, and he hated it even more that he wasn't with her. Carter Baizen was never one to tie himself down, but he didn't feel right about ever being without her.

He told her simply that he wanted to marry her, and she smirked lightly and her smile _almost_ reach her eyes as she told him it was the _absolute worst_ time for a proposal, and then gripped a fistful of his shirt in her hand and pulled him into a bruising kiss. He settled his body into the bed next to hers and held her as she alternated between tears and sleep for the rest of the night.

In the morning he brought her cereal – Mini Wheats with bananas – and bought her a ring.

After all, it's not worth it if it's not hard sometimes.

--

Blair informed Serena that couples who lose children either find themselves closer than before or end up drifting apart. Everyone probably expected, flighty and fearful of commitment as they were, that Carter and Serena would do the latter, and they didn't disappoint.

She changed her major – to prelaw – and reunited with some of her socialite friends who were too shallow to really care that she'd ever been in love or ever lost a baby. She travelled and she excelled and it all seemed a little bit _Legally Blonde_ but he was infinitely proud of her. For his part, he started commuting a bit more between various business locations, but he unfailingly returned to New York, and he kept an eye on her through Chuck – who was surprisingly willing to offer up information on his stepsister – and through Page Six.

Serena was really making something of herself, independent and beautiful and smart. It was no wonder she was considered a catch – she always had been, with her last name and her body, but now she was the real deal, the take-home-to-meet-grandma kind of girl. Countless guys lusted after her, but no one succeeded, and there was a simple reason behind it: she wore her engagement ring. All the time, every single day and night, a diamond glittering on the fourth finger of her left hand. People gossiped and speculated and got entirely confused; he was the only who knew the real significance behind it.

So he was the only one who wasn't surprised when they found their way back to each other, nearly naked as they ate cereal in the kitchen of the apartment he'd never sold, the one that still had a strawberry-pink-printed baby blanket tucked away in the back of the closet.

--

When they _officially_ got back together they went to Miami. It was her ideal vacation destination, a secret she'd told him long ago, so he bought tickets and booked a hotel suite and surprised her. For all the places she'd been in the world, she just wanted to go to Miami and lie on the beach. At heart, for all the extravagance she'd been supplied, she ached for simplicity, and he could appreciate that, after the time they'd spent apart.

_Welcome to Miami!_ _Buenvenido a Miami. _She sang Will Smith and wore bikinis and short dresses and drank strawberry daiquiris and got everyone's attention and laughed that perfect laugh of hers and tasted like all of those mysteries he was just beginning to get a hold of and he wondered how he'd ever lived with her. But they'd never really been anything permanent. They came together at all the right moments and split apart for whatever reason they did, only to come together once again.

One morning she straddled him and kissed him and whispered into his ear that she wanted to marry him, she was ready now, so they packed their things and set off to Santorini to make it permanent. They got married in a little white church and she had this weird need to make sure they said everything in English and that it was official, and later she explained to him that she kinda-but-not-really married some random guy in Spain once, and any reservations he'd ever had about marriage evaporated instantly, because she was crazy and impulsive in wonderful ways, and she always would be.

--

They had a party back in New York that inevitably ended up being much bigger than they'd originally intended it to be. He chuckled into his drink as Blair grabbed Serena's wrist and whined about their elopement and his girlfriend – his fiancée – his _wife_ rolled her eyes at her best friend and assured the that Blair's wedding would be big enough for the both of them, and she winked at him across the room, strawberry daiquiri in hand and pinkness in her cheeks.

For the first couple years of their marriage they travelled – Serena had been grounded in New York long enough that she was getting restless, and the funds at their disposal were nearly limitless considering his their joint family wealth and how well his business was doing – so they just went wherever they felt like going. They kept the apartment, which had slowly but surely morphed from his to theirs, so that returning to the Upper East Side was always an option.

They returned one Christmas to be with her family and nearly a year and a half later they went home once more for the wedding of the year: Blair Waldorf's marriage to Chuck Bass. Serena was her matron of honour and Carter attended Chuck's bachelor party and they _really_ got along, not just for the sake of protecting themselves from Blair's wrath if anything went wrong on or near her wedding day. It rained on the morning of the wedding, and to everyone's surprise, Blair checked the forecast and laughed, and Serena grabbed his arm and leaned in close to whisper that _that_, that right there, was the reason she knew Chuck was the right guy for Blair. He wrapped an arm around her waist and considered asking her when she knew he was the right guy for her, but it occurred to him then that it was a pointless question, because that, like so many other things about them, was indefinable, and it was meant to be that way.

After Chuck and Blair's reception, during which Serena and Nate made a joint toast that had everyone laughing and crying, and every guest drank more than they should ever have been allowed, and the happy couple glowed, they returned to their apartment for the first time in years. He went straight to the kitchen – their staff came and went, but for the most part they preferred their privacy – to fight with the coffee maker and pour a couple bowls of Mini Wheats while she went to the bedroom to get out of her bridesmaids dress. When he finally got the coffee brewing he went to look for her and found her sitting crossed-legged on the floor of the bedroom's walk-in closet still in her elegant pale blue dress, flowers still pinned in her hair, holding that strawberry-printed baby blanket. He felt his breath catch as she looked at him, intoxicating poetry in her teary eyes, and when he saw a glimmer of hope amidst the sorrow, he knew.

_Yes_, he said, and her lips turned upward as she picked herself up the floor and wrapped her arms around her neck, and he hugged her back so hard that he lifted her up off the floor.

--

As a last hurrah of just-the-two-of-them, they went back to Miami, but it was a tamer trip than any one they'd ever taken before. She didn't drink and they walked on the beach and spent most of their time in bed. It felt like they were closing a chapter of their lives as they boarded the plane back home, hands securely linked together and swinging between them, but it felt right, like it was time to move on to the rest of the book.

They resolved to focus on really making New York their _home_, a concept that was foreign to them in a weird way. Despite the fact that they'd both spent their childhoods there, the Upper East Side wasn't the answer that sprang to their minds when they were asked where there home was. Living somewhere and having a home were two entirely different things, and over the years they'd grown accustomed to finding home in each other.

He relocated the headquarters of his company and hired her little brother's boyfriend and started meeting Chuck for lunch a couple times a month. Serena got a position at a law firm where she got noticed for more than her hair and her eyes and her legs, and he knew how much that pleased her. They got so absorbed in their work that for a little while they forgot about each other a bit. There were still Mini Wheats with sliced bananas overtop and showering together and the way she'd laugh when he read her something amusing aloud from the paper and meeting each other for dinner at the newest, hottest restaurants where she gave him these _looks_ over the candle-lit tables. But they forgot about the important stuff, because it could be hard: when she lost a case he'd kiss her and she'd shrug him away and go to bed early to read, when his father forgot _again_ that they'd had a meeting planned, the first in two years, she'd gently suggest they go see a movie and he'd say no kindly but firmly, and she pretended not to cry and he pretended not to notice when there was another, and another, and another negative pregnancy test.

One day he met her outside of works with pink roses (that should have smelled like strawberries) and whisked her onto a plane and to Santorini. When they arrived, she laughed brightly, and he remembered how very, very much he loved her. He figured it was the perfect destination – somehow, they always found themselves back in Santorini, and right now what they needed was to find each other again. They sat up in the night not far from the small church they got married in, and he said that they tended to drift apart and come together again, but they were married, and they needed to work harder at the _staying together_ part. They'd made a commitment forever. So they stayed awake in the moonlight and drank champagne – the first time she'd imbibed alcohol in months – and talked their way through everything they'd been going through as individuals until they absorbed each other's triumphs and losses fully. They promised to work through everything together, no matter what their future did or didn't bring. In the early, early morning once they'd polished off their champagne, he kissed her and she tasted the same as she always had, and they stripped off all their clothes and dove in the water and the rest was the same old story.

--

Three weeks and two days after Santorini, she stepped into the bedroom, her blue eyes wide, holding up a white stick with an unmistakable pink plus sign, and the energy behind their smiles probably could have lit the entire city.

Later he joked that _ohmygodwe'repregnant!_ sex was even better than angry sex, and she rolled her eyes and batted half-heartedly at his arm, and he took a moment just to look at her, glowing already, and decided he'd gotten very, very lucky.

The second time around, there were no tears (well, only happy ones) or fights (only arguments brought about by her hormones) and no panic at all, only fulfillment, right from the start. He worried like some clichéd husband that he refused to be while Blair through her a truly amazing baby shower and her mother suddenly became much more actively involved in their life. She took maternity leave and he accompanied her to every single appointment. They poured over baby name books cuddled up in bed together and she called him a softie and he didn't have the strength to protest when she was looking at like that. She started craving these fig-and-hazelnut hors d'oeuvres that they'd had once in Santorini and he had to make several international phone calls to track down the recipe and then it took a little bit more work to find a chef in New York who could make them to her satisfaction, but he did it without a second thought.

While he watched over her protectively as she slept or kissed her tummy before he headed off to work for the day, he realized that she had the same hold over him that he'd always had over her. He had assumed for years that he'd been the one to notice how genuine the attraction they felt for each other was, but it turned out that he'd fallen for her just as hard as she'd fallen for him.

--

Their daughter was born on a balmy late-June day with the blue eyes they'd always known she'd have and her mother's nose. Serena cried in an almost unnoticeable way, tears glistening on her cheeks, to which sweaty strands of her hair stuck. He kissed her, whispering against her lips about how wonderful she was and how wonderful it's all going to be.

Once their little girl was cleaned up and breathing fine, all fingers and toes accounted for, and nestled in the strawberry-printed-pink blanket that was always meant to be hers, Serena held her like she never intended to let go, and he admired everything about his wife as he watched her admire everything about their daughter. The sight of the two of them, so perfect and healthy and all his, almost – _almost_ – took his breath away.

--

They named her Persephone, a name seemingly so pretentious that they both would have laughed over it once upon a time, but it fit. It was hard to find something good to go with _Baizen_, after all, and even at a few hours old, she could handle the name, and they knew she'd carry it well for years to come. And as if in one last need to rebel, they gave her a name that referenced murder in mythology rather than something cheesy that meant _God's gift_ or something. Maybe most importantly, it was Greek, and there was something special about that country, the significant roles it had played in the many stages of their relationship.

Blair adored her full name, cooing it down to her goddaughter the first time she held her, and Nate wrinkled his nose and shook his head fondly at them all and christened her _Sephy_ instead. Blair balked and Chuck laughed quietly and Serena smiled at Carter as their friends began to bicker, and the nickname stuck.

--

For the first year of Sephy's life they kept things stable and simple; all they wanted to do was spend time with each other and their daughter and attempt to catch up on their sleep. The first night they ever let her spend away from home was with Blair and Chuck, and when they returned to drop her off the next day around noon, he and Serena were only just beginning their traditional snack of Mini Wheats and bananas, sleepless for an entirely different reason.

When she turned one, the cutest little girl in the world with her father's dark hair and bright blue eyes, they headed to Dubai and spent the next two years living there. They wanted to get out of the city, and since it was the secondary branch of Carter's company it was the logical place to go. They stayed for an extended period of time because they wanted to give their daughter stability in her young life, but they were also eager to introduce her to their love for travel. Sephy hit many of her life's milestones in Dubai, and it made Serena giggle when she remembered that she'd haughtily once told him that she thought Dubai was overrated.

They travelled back to Manhattan shortly after Sephy's third birthday for the birth of her'cousin, Chuck and Blair's first child, a sweetly stubborn little boy who seemed like the perfect mix of his parents. Carter expected the baby's godparents to be Serena and Nate, and he was pleasantly surprised when Chuck approached him instead. Somewhere along the line they'd buried the hatchet. Serena beamed and joked that _she_ was the cause of their friendship and they should therefore be indebted to her forever, and Sephy – without having idea what the adults were talking about – automatically took her mother's side, making them all laugh.

The year before Sephy started school Chuck and Blair relocated to Paris for a few months to launch a new line for Waldorf Designs, so the Baizen family spent some time with them there in the late spring, admiring the sights and attempting to teach their daughter some French. Carter listened to her talk in her hopeful, American-accented française and watched how she seemed to get more daring and more perfect with each day, with her all-absorbing eyes and her wavy brown hair, tamed by a headband her aunt would have been proud of. He'd never imagined it was possible to love someone so much until he really let himself love Serena, and the feeling was only doubled now that he had two girls in his life. The night before he and Serena left, they put the kids to sleep and stayed up all night laughing over wine, and he felt the biggest sense of _family_ he'd ever experienced.

Shortly afterward, they took Sephy to Greece so she could see the place they loved so much. After a couple weeks of white buildings and a sea so blue that it rivalled their daughter's eyes, they headed back to New York to settle down again. They sold their old apartment and bought some Fifth Avenue real estate. Serena's old law firm was more than willing to take her back, Carter resumed full-time work at his company, and in September, they sent Sephy off to school at Constance Billard. She fit in with ease and starred in the holiday play (_definitely your daughter, _he'd joked to Serena) and he swooped her up in his arms and gave her pink roses afterward, and she pouted and asked why they didn't smell like strawberries, because that would just be _better_.

In the winter they walked through Central Park with their hands clasped together, trailing after Sephy, who ran ahead trying to catch snowflakes on her pink mittens, and he marvelled at how easily they'd let themselves fit the mould. They were still fairly young, successful, and they'd settled back down in New York with nine-to-five jobs and a five-year-old daughter. They'd become everything their parents had envisioned for them when they were Persephone's age…and they liked it. They, the Upper East Side's biggest rebels, they loved it. There was nothing pulling at them to run away, nothing deterring them from how they'd built their world. They'd found that feeling of belonging in each other time after time and he'd come to think that that was the way it was for them, but he'd been wrong. Now, he could see a future spanning out in front of them, secure and perfect as it was. He and Serena could make a place into their home and they had done just that; it had just taken them a long while to learn that the only requirements were one another.

It was enigmatic, him and her. But he liked it that way, because it wouldn't have been fun if it was easy. And he never would if known it was worth it if it hadn't been hard sometimes.


End file.
